The Original Vampire Love Triangle

If you came to The Vampire Diaries through the CW show, the books might surprise you. L.J. Smith published The Awakening in 1991, creating the template that Twilight, True Blood, and dozens of other series would later follow: a human girl, two vampire brothers, a town full of secrets.

Smith was arguably the first author to bring vampire romance to a young adult audience on this scale. She deserves more credit than she gets.

What It's About

Elena Gilbert is the queen of Robert E. Lee High School in Fell's Church, Virginia: beautiful, popular, and used to getting what she wants. When the mysterious Stefan Salvatore arrives, Elena is intrigued by the one boy who doesn't fall at her feet. Their connection is instant and intense. But Stefan is a centuries-old vampire born in Renaissance Florence, and his brother Damon (darker, crueler, and dangerously seductive) has followed him to Fell's Church.

The love triangle is the engine of the book, but Smith wraps it in a genuine mystery: someone is attacking people in Fell's Church, and the evidence keeps pointing at Stefan.

What's Different From the Show

Almost everything. Book-Elena is blonde, confident bordering on arrogant, and nothing like Nina Dobrev's warmer, more vulnerable TV version. The town is Fell's Church, not Mystic Falls. Bonnie is a red-haired girl with Scottish ancestry and psychic abilities. The tone is darker and more gothic than the show's slick production.

If you go in expecting the show, you'll be disoriented. If you go in expecting a 1991 YA gothic romance, you'll find something genuinely special.

What Works

Smith writes romantic tension like a blade: the push-pull between Elena and Stefan, the dangerous allure of Damon, the way she makes the reader want both brothers for entirely different reasons. The pacing is tight (it's a short book), and the gothic atmosphere of Fell's Church is effectively unsettling.

What Doesn't

The prose is very much of its era, early '90s YA, with the occasional stilted dialogue. Elena's initial shallowness can be off-putting, though Smith uses it deliberately as a starting point for her growth. And the book ends on a cliffhanger that essentially requires you to read The Struggle immediately after.

The Velvet Coven Verdict

The Awakening is a piece of genre history. Smith built the vampire love triangle before it was a trope, and she did it with a gothic sensibility that the TV adaptation traded for teen drama gloss. Read it for what it is: the blueprint.

L.J. Smith passed away in 2025 at age 66. The world she created lives on.

Content note: Violence, character manipulation, mild horror elements.

Quick Reference

  • Author: L.J. Smith (1959–2025)
  • Published: 1991
  • Series: The Vampire Diaries, Book 1 (4 original novels + sequels)
  • Pages: ~250
  • Setting: Fell's Church, Virginia
  • Tropes: Love triangle, brooding brothers, small-town secrets, gothic
  • Spice level: 0/5: romantic tension, no explicit content
  • Adaptations: CW series (2009–2017), spawned The Originals and Legacies